Sales techniques based on empathy. Selling benefits greatly from the ability to develop an empathic relationship and genuine and deep listening to the customer. Rather than engaging in large presentations, empathy-based sales techniques give a lot of space to listening to the customer’s “story” and analyzing their needs and expectations.

• Learn more about this content by reading the article or if you prefer by purchasing the book “Solution Selling” directly from which it comes and where you will find an in-depth discussion of sales methods based on empathy.
• The empathic approach involves an opposite concept: listening in depth to understand the mental map of our interlocutor, his belief system, and finding the psychological spaces for inserting a proposal.
• In the ALM method we distinguish some main types of empathy, developed and exposed in the volume “Intercultural Negotiation”.

Behavioral empathy: understanding behaviors and their causes, understanding the why of behavior and the chains of related behaviors.

Emotional empathy: being able to perceive the emotions experienced by others, understanding what emotions the subject feels (what emotion is in circulation), what intensity, what emotional mixes the interlocutor experiences, how emotions are associated with people, objects, facts, internal or external situations that the other experiences.

Relational empathy: understanding the map of the subject’s relationships and his affective values, understanding with whom the subject relates voluntarily or by obligation, with whom he must relate to decide, work or live, what is his map of “significant others”, of the contacts, of the interlocutors, of the “other relevant” and influencers who affect his decisions, who he gets along with and who doesn’t, who affects his professional life (and in some cases personal). You can go for the pharmaceutical empathy based selling in this case.

Cognitive empathy (or cognitive prototypes): understanding the cognitive prototypes active in a given moment of time, the beliefs, values, ideologies, mental structures that the subject possesses and to which he still anchors.

Positive and destructive elements of empathy

• Empathy is destroyed or fostered by specific communicative behaviors and attitudes.
• Listening communication, and the quality of listening, includes the need to clearly separate comprehension activities (incoming communication) from direct expression activities (outgoing communication).

Rules for quality listening

In empathy-based sales techniques, knowing how to listen is essential.

During the listening phases it is necessary:

• Do not interrupt the other,
• Do not judge him prematurely,
• Do not express judgments that could block the expressive flow of others,
• Do not get distracted, do not think about anything else, do not do other activities while listening (except taking any notes), use the thought to listen, do not wander,
• Do not correct the other while affirming, even when one does not agree, remain listening
• Do not try to overwhelm him,
• Do not try to dominate it,
• Do not try to teach him or impart truth, hold back the temptation to enter the expressive flow to correct something that is not considered correct,
• Don’t talk about yourself,
• Testify interest and participation through verbal cues and body language,

Of particular interest are the attitudes of:

Genuine interest and curiosity towards the counterpart: the desire to know and explore the mind of another person, activate human and professional curiosity,

Inner silence: creating a state of emotional stillness (getting rid of negative emotions and prejudices) to listen to the other and respect their rhythms.